


Break Even

by red_river



Category: Komatta Toki ni wa Hoshi ni Kike!
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Resolution, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-03 15:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_river/pseuds/red_river
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of Ayako's car accident, Takara moves in with Reiichi and Yoshiya to patch the wounds Kiyomine has left in him.  A month later, a desperate Kiyomine needs a hand to put things right. Maybe winter isn't the only thing that's ready to thaw.</p><p>Multichap fic, Kiyomine x Takara with a side of Reiichi and Yoshiya; follows Crash and Burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> One of the hardest sections of Komatta Toki for me followed the car accident in Volume 13, when Kiyomine very clearly chooses his sister Ayako over Takara, and leaves their relationship visibly scarred. I wished that there had been more consequences for Kiyomine's outburst, and that Takara had been able to lean on his friends, specifically Reiichi and Yoshiya, to get comfort after this betrayal. The story "Crash and Burn" was the product of that wish.
> 
> This story picks up where "Crash and Burn" left off, and will feature more of Takara and Kiyomine, as well as the resolution of their half of the story. Reiichi and Yoshiya feature in a background role, largely in a family context; there will be one more sequel to this story, in order to tie up their loose ends.
> 
> Note: Kiyomine x Takara, with Yoshiya x Reiichi pre-slash hints.

**Break Even: Chapter One**

Takara futzed with one corner of the linen napkin balled up in his lap, trying to resist the urge to rock back and forth in his black wicker-backed chair as he stared out across Il Ristorante Concerto, a stuffy ninth-floor Italian bistro he sort of remembered being featured in the _Top of the City_ magazine Reiichi had left on the back of the toilet. It was almost eleven, and the place was basically empty—which made it that much more awkward for him to be sitting alone at a table for two, drumming his fingers and staring past two actual candlesticks at the half-finished meal and heavy black coat Masaya had left behind when he got up to take a phone call. No matter how many times the Kashiwagis dragged him out, he never really got used to places like this, where there was more silverware in one place setting than there were appetizers on the three-page menu, and the chef's name on the cover was followed by a string of former restaurants, tacked onto her last name like advanced degrees.

Takara glanced out the huge black windows at the skyline. He felt like he was in a movie—but not a movie he wanted to be in. One of those awful black-and-white movies that Reiichi liked to watch in the original French, which always seemed to turn on this or that phrase Reiichi insisted the subtitles mistranslated. Or considering the way he stuck out like a sore thumb, even in his itchy collared shirt and jeans with no holes in the knees, maybe it was more like a Lifetime tear-jerker, and he was the Orphan Annie character marrying into money…that thought got weird fast, and Takara shook it away, glancing at Masaya backlit against the window with the phone still pressed to his ear. A spy movie, then, and he was the confidential informant out to dinner with the police commissioner, not realizing his cover had been blown and he was about to be ruthlessly interrogated.

The last version hit a little too close to home, and Takara tensed, nudging his fork—actually, his third fork—into the oily shrimp-infested thing he'd ordered. The whole menu was in Italian, and the only word he'd recognized was ravioli, but when his entrée came covered in prawns it felt like a bait and switch. Just like the bread that wasn't just bread but a focaccia sage loaf, and didn't come with butter but olive oil and vinegar on a slanted dish that reminded Takara of a cruddy old inkstone, dusted with pepper flakes like little ink crusties that turned his appetite off. Like the casual dinner that wasn't casual, because there could only be one thing Masaya had called him out tonight to talk about. The only thing any Kashiwagi seemed to want to talk to him about these days.

Kiyomine.

 _Kiyomine_. Takara mouthed those four syllables to himself. He wasn't sure _what_ he felt anymore when that name came up—something that clenched in the vicinity of his heart and twisted in his guts like the oily Italian something he'd chowed down on mostly to keep his mouth full, waiting for Masaya to go in for the body blow. He wasn't even sure what he was doing here, out to dinner with Masaya of all people, except that all Masaya's requests usually came in the form of demands, and he'd had the feeling if he wasn't ready and waiting by the Souryou curb at 9:45, the dinner invite would have turned into a kidnapping. If he had to be stranded somewhere, dreading the inevitable question that he didn't know how to answer, at least a five-star restaurant was better than a basement. Probably.

His first two weeks living with Reiichi and Okuno had been blissfully Kiyomine free. Takara had stuffed himself on Reiichi's endless supply of new treats and Okuno's perfect milk coffee, scored a record high on his physics test, learned to swear in two new languages, and generally done a killer job of forgetting everything he was trying to forget—his dad, and his silent house that wouldn't be his much longer, and his bed down the hall that was maybe still empty or maybe slowly filling with Kiyomine's castoff junk, a big, messy pile of takeout boxes and dirty laundry and crumpled homework and all the other odds and ends Kiyomine had replaced him with. Takara didn't know because he hadn't asked, hadn't stopped by, hadn't listened to the twenty-four new messages on his cell phone; Kiyomine had started texting instead, so maybe his voicemail was finally full. And for two weeks, everyone had let him get away with that. But by the third week, the Kashiwagis were out in force, poking around the edges of the problem like it was a bruise they were afraid of making worse but couldn't leave alone, either. Really Takara was amazed he hadn't heard from Masaya before now—Reiichi's influence, no doubt. But apparently four weeks was the absolute limit of Masaya's patience.

Speaking of patience…Takara wrinkled his nose and craned his head to catch a glimpse of Masaya, loitering by the swinging kitchen doors now, a little of his nervousness turning into annoyance the longer this went on. The waiter had already stopped by twice to see if Takara needed anything, a sympathetic look on his face like…actually, Takara had no idea what the staff thought was happening here. It was like he'd been stood up while his date was still in the room.

All he wanted was to go home, but there was no way that was going to happen while Masaya was barely a third of the way through his meal, his creamy shellfish pasta looking greasier and lumpier by the second. Takara braced his elbows on the table and dropped his chin into his hands, not really caring about his manners anymore as he watched Masaya finally stuff the phone into his pocket and head back toward the table. If this was what dinner with Masaya was like, Takara wasn't surprised he never had anybody to drag along to those huge Kashiwagi get-togethers…Masaya might have this whole fork-and-spoon secret handshake down, but he had clearly missed some of the broad strokes.

"My apologies," Masaya said smoothly as he slid back into his chair, pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger. "The contractors again…there's been a great deal of trouble over what kind of tile can be used on the new patio. We might have to ship the whole allotment back to Naples."

"It's whatever," Takara muttered, his fork prodding one of the greasy shrimp shipwrecked on his plate. He really hoped Masaya wasn't about to dive back into it; from the second Takara got into the car and resigned himself, reluctantly, to heated leather seats, Masaya had been going on about some construction at the Kashiwagi main house, seeming to forget that though Takara had been to the house plenty, he didn't understand word one about zoning permits and contract laws and historical protections, and honestly had a pretty shaky grasp on where Naples was. Takara had actually been really thankful for the phone call that cut him off—for the first five minutes, anyway.

Probably Masaya had picked this topic because he thought it was something they had in common, and the only other thing they had in common was a Claymore that had to be set off with pinpoint timing. But he couldn't totally swallow the sick feeling that this was some awful lead-in to telling Takara he knew all about his home being sold, and had some opinion about that too. It seemed like Masaya always knew everything that was going on in the lives of all Kashiwagis and Kashiwagi adjacent people, while never missing a day of work and still lowering the crime rate. Takara didn't want to talk about the house thing with anyone, but Masaya was definitely in the bottom two. Really the only person beating him out was…

Masaya cleared his throat and lowered his fork with half a bite of rubbery seafood clinging to the prongs, and the second their eyes met, Takara knew what was coming. He'd had forty-five minutes to prepare for the main event, but somehow he still wasn't ready for this, his hands fisting unconsciously into his napkin like he could make his guts stop wringing if he squeezed tightly enough.

"Fujishima," Masaya began in a soft voice that was so much worse because Takara had never, ever heard him sound like that. "You know, my brother…"

Takara tried to suck in a breath but couldn't get it past the lump in his throat. He knew what came next—maybe not exactly, but in the ballpark anyway, the same words that had been haunting him for the last two weeks. _He hasn't been himself_ —that was how Ayako put it. _He must have really screwed up, 'cause he's taking it hard—_ Tsukasa, for once not jumping down his throat. _He seems distant, and he hasn't been home_ —some voice on the phone he forgot to mark. And Reiichi who always started, _I know he hurt you—he got violent and angry and he was wrong. He knows that too._ Like he was mad at Kiyomine.

Takara weighed the pros and cons of downing Masaya's entire glass of wine before the cop could stop him. He wasn't mad—all that was long behind him, beaten out into a pillow in Reiichi's borrowed room in the absolute dead of night, when the only sound in the whole dorm seemed to be the blood rushing in his ears.

He cared about Kiyomine more than anything, even now. He knew Aritomo spent a lot of time in their old room, and that Asou dragged Kiyomine out to the basketball courts, and that at least one of Reiichi's weekly business meetings was a cover for seeing Kiyomine. And he was grateful, because he couldn't stand the thought of Kiyomine all alone, sleeping with the lights on, with that same distant expression he had worn when they first met, before all the knockdown-dragouts that had made them…whatever they'd been.

He also couldn't stand the thought of being the one by Kiyomine's side anymore.

Maybe Masaya had caught him staring at the wine, or maybe he just looked as miserable as he felt, wrung out and exhausted before that name even touched the air of the restaurant. Either way, it was obvious Masaya had lost his nerve to ask whatever he'd called Takara out to ask him—his half-finished sentence dead-ended into an offhand comment about Kiyomine's latest test scores, and when the next bite of shellfish slipped off his fork and dove headfirst into the oil and vinegar Masaya seemed to take it as a sign, dropping a stack of bills on the table and hustling them out of the restaurant without even asking for any boxes.

That was the clincher. Masaya was a workaholic who never wasted food—he always asked for boxes, even if all that was left was bread and salad. Takara supposed you couldn't be up in everybody's business all the time without losing out on at least one skill; cooking, in this case. Flustering the unflappable Kashiwagi might have felt like more of a victory if he didn't spend the whole elevator ride to the parking garage with his arms wrapped around his stomach, trying not to puke all over Masaya's wingtips.

Even weirder than Masaya sounding the retreat was what awaited them in the parking garage: Reiichi in a sleek black topcoat and long gloves, leaning casually against Masaya's Beamer as if he'd just appeared out of the cold March night. He waved cheerfully at Takara as the pair stepped out of the elevator, but Takara didn't return the gesture, casting a sideways glance at his would-be kidnapper. Either Masaya was psychic, Reiichi was psychic, or they had been performing the secret Kashiwagi under-the-table SOS texting routine. Takara had caught Reiichi at that once, when they'd been stuck at an incredibly boring retirement party for one of the school board members.

It was almost funny, if it was true. What would Masaya's distress call have been, anyway? _SOS I can't get what I want from Fujishima, I need someone sneakier to put the screws to him. SOS I'm about to contribute to the alcohol delinquency of a minor. SOS I think things are about to get emotional._ Masaya probably sucked at emotional moments. Kiyomine always had.

 _Kiyomine_. The name was like a knife he drove into himself sometimes, just to measure how deep it went, how much it hurt now. In those first few days, when even Kiyomine's ringtone sounded pissed off, he had changed the Caller ID entry—just one letter, his first initial—so it wouldn't knock the wind out of him every time that name came up on the glowing screen. He'd changed it back just three hours later. Somehow that name packed an extra punch when he had to fill in the other seven letters himself.

"Well, if it isn't my little social climber," Reiichi greeted him with a smile, then turned to admonish his cousin. "Really, Masaya. You should have invited me along. You know how I love Concerto's _amuse-bouches._ "

Takara distinctly remembered Reiichi trash-talking all of Masaya's favorite Italian places after the last time the Kashiwagi brood went out to dinner, though of course he'd have been scandalized to hear Takara call it that— _candid critique_ , that was Reiichi's phrase for things he was kicking the crap out of. But it didn't matter—Masaya had picked up the script, though Takara wasn't sure who they were putting on this performance for, the parking garage deserted at this late hour. Maybe it was just classic Kashiwagi face-saving, keeping everything sloppy and emotional out of sight until they could get behind closed doors.

"Thoughtless of me," Masaya agreed, resting one hand on the lapel of his suit but not quite managing to sound contrite instead of relieved. "The _Gragnano con molluschi_ was outstanding, as always."

It was nothing he hadn't heard before, but for some reason, tonight, Takara couldn't take one more second of listening to Masaya trump up the meal he'd left half of on his plate. He slipped past Reiichi and crawled into the back behind the driver's seat, where he would be impossible for Masaya to look at without breaking a few traffic laws. Hopefully they could keep each other busy arguing about zoning regulations or whatever…but then Reiichi slid into the back too, and there was no surprise in Masaya's eyes, the only thing he could see as the older Kashiwagi dutifully adjusted his mirror and reminded Takara to buckle his seatbelt.

The car started with a soft rumble more like a purr than an engine turning over, and they slid soundlessly out into the frosty night, the icy lights of the city all ringed with haloes beyond the shimmering black windows. Takara stared through his reflection and then caught Reiichi's beside him in the glass as the older boy launched into a story about the hash Asou had made of his and Yoshiya's dinner, seeming not to care whether anyone was really listening—and though Reiichi's voice was lively like always, he couldn't disguise how gentle his eyes were in the dark glass as he stared at Takara's shoulder, waiting for him to turn around. And maybe he was just tired of the whole charade, this great big performance put on so he could save a little face—or maybe he just knew it would never end if he didn't say something. Either way, Takara realized all of a sudden that he was speaking, the words spilling out of him and interrupting Reiichi right in the middle of a sentence.

"…not one of Asou's natural talents, I assure you. You'd think with only one job—"

"That night—Kiyomine, he…" Takara took a breath and held it in his chest for a long moment, wishing that Masaya's car wasn't so top-of-the-line; what he wouldn't give for a little road noise, the grumble of the tires over wet pavement, anything to break the utter silence that followed his bitten-off admission. Reiichi didn't seem to mind being interrupted, though it was pretty rude even by Takara's standards.

"He shouldn't have said or done those things," Reiichi told him, his voice soft again. There was no question of what night they were talking about. Takara heard the whisper of satin on leather, watched through the glass as one of Reiichi's hands slid, palm up, into the space between them—but he didn't take it, didn't even turn around, keeping his eyes fixed on all the lights stranded out there in the darkness, like a hundred ships without harbors, run aground. He couldn't even bring himself to care that Masaya was eavesdropping from the front seat—he just had to get this out, dredge up the words that had been lodged inside of him for four weeks, before one more Kashiwagi looked at him with soft eyes, waiting for an answer to this same question.

"No, it's not that," Takara started, and then backtracked. "I mean, yeah, I was mad at him, he shouldn't have done that…but I know Kiyomine. I know his temper." That moment in the hallway—his head slamming back into the lockers, the shock that went through him staring up into fear and desperation twisted on Kiyomine's face—that was Kiyomine at his worst, but it was still the Kiyomine that Takara recognized, the Kiyomine he would give anything to patch back together. Takara shook his head, watched his reflection denying the same thing. "After that, at the hospital, I went to find him while you and Masaya were talking to the plastic surgeon. He was with Ayako—he didn't even know I was there—and…"

Masaya took a sharp right, like he'd turned the wheel a little too late, and Takara reached up to brace himself against the window, foggy now with his breath. When the car straightened out, he studied the abandoned streets through that one patch of clear glass.

"He said that he loved her, and that as long as she was all right, nothing else mattered. And he meant it," Takara finished, wondering when his voice had dropped to a whisper. Maybe it was a side effect of his eyes tearing up, the landscape of dark buildings blurring as they took an off ramp and left the lights of the city behind. "Kiyomine wants to say sorry," Takara murmured. "He wants to tell me he was wrong, and how much I mean to him, but…" He bit his lip, fighting to keep the tears on his lashes as he turned finally, looking desperately up at Reiichi. "What if I don't believe him?"

"Oh, Fujishima…" Reiichi began, before he gave up on whatever he'd been about to say and just hooked an arm over Takara's shoulder, drawing him into a hug. But in the moment before Reiichi pulled him in, Takara had seen what he needed to—the tiny spark of fear in Reiichi's eyes, proof that he didn't have an answer to that question either.

Masaya was a silent shadow stamped into the haze of the windshield. Takara pressed his face against the black wool of Reiichi's coat and gave in to a hollow smile.

Of course nobody had an answer for him. That would have been too easy.

* * *

Thanks for reading. Reviews always welcome.


	2. Chapter 2

**Break Even: Chapter Two  
**

Of all the Kashiwagis who swept in now and then to spirit Reiichi—or, more recently, Fujishima—away to a late dinner on a school night, Masaya was the only one over whom Yoshiya had deep misgivings. Which wasn't to say the whole clan didn't have their quirks; a night out with Kashiwagi Senior always meant a few unsettled hours for Yoshiya, wondering if dinner at a Malaysian restaurant in downtown Tokyo would turn into dinner in Johor, his only clue that Reiichi had left the country a cursory text message that came in after dessert, asking him to chair the dorm meeting the next afternoon. Hosaka was his own conundrum, as was Tsukasa, though the latter not as much for Yoshiya as for Reiichi, who was preternaturally observant about everything in his life except how much his younger brother longed for his undivided attention.

But it was Masaya who left Yoshiya's spine stiff when he called to inform them that he would be taking Fujishima to dinner—alone—at ten o'clock on a Thursday, Reiichi's expression twitching with the subtle tics of annoyance as the voice on the other side of the phone derailed one by one his casual attempts to invite himself along. It could have been the sense of entitlement he found so aggravating, the unspoken prerogative of the only Kashiwagi grandchild who could really overrule Reiichi. But it was simpler than that, at least for Yoshiya. He had known Masaya long enough to know that the other man's priorities were his job and his siblings, his younger brother in particular, and that everything else was a very distant second. Which meant dinner was nothing but a feeble cover for bullying Fujishima about Hosaka—a matter that Yoshiya privately felt was none of Masaya's, or the rest of the Kashiwagi clan's, business.

So he was less surprised than annoyed when Masaya interrupted the debacle Asou had made of their polenta with an urgent text message, summoning Reiichi halfway across town into the teeth of a gathering storm. The message hadn't said much— _ristorante concerto garage level 3_ —with the suspicious lack of capitals and punctuation that always meant a Kashiwagi was texting under his thousand-thread-count napkin. Still, Yoshiya feared the worst, a CocoaBella fiasco all over again; so did Reiichi, if the speed with which he'd gathered his coat and gloves was any indication, though true to form he kept up his casual façade for Asou and Kuzumi's benefit until the second he raced out to his idling cab.

In the last moment before he reached for the doorknob, as Yoshiya tucked the thick wool collar up around his neck, Reiichi had leaned in to whisper, "Something sweet might not go amiss." Which was why Yoshiya had spent the half hour since his departure ensconced in their half-sized kitchen, defacing his blue polo shirt with specks of flour and improvising cinnamon apple crisps in the illegal toaster oven Reiichi and Fujishima had procured God knew where to make cherry turnovers for Valentine's Day. In the time between folding down pastry corners, he stared out into the unbroken blackness of the night, his unease rattling inside him like the barren branches beyond the hazy window as the snow set in.

Or maybe he disliked nights out with Masaya because there was always the chance they would end like this: with the clatter of the door to the enormous corner suite banging open, and the stomp of boots in the hall, a little too hard to be banishing a light dusting of snow. Yoshiya paused in his work pinning toothpicks into the corners of the next crisp and leaned out of the kitchen.

"Reiichi?" he greeted, content to let the other boy take the lead in this delicate situation.

At a glance, he could tell Masaya's tocsin had not been in time. Though Fujishima tried his best to keep his face turned away, shucking his coat and leaning down too deliberately to fumble with the laces of his boots, Yoshiya could see that his eyes were red, with that soft sheen that meant he hadn't yet cried himself out. But he was surprised to see the same kind of distress in Reiichi as the taller boy peeled his gloves with distracted fingers, something wayworn lingering on his face before he met Yoshiya's gaze and composed his lips into a smile.

"Ah—Yoshiya. The snow caught up with us in the parking lot," he said, gesturing offhandedly to the trail of white footprints that had escorted them in. He reached out to settle a hand on Fujishima's shoulder, and Yoshiya frowned when both of them seemed to flinch at the touch, as if something fragile had settled between them that even Reiichi was unsure how to breach. He pressed on gamely, his voice almost too bright. "Something smells delicious. Are you up for a little dessert, Fujishima?"

"Cinnamon apple crisps," Yoshiya said, because it felt like he had to say something. But Fujishima was shaking his head long before the syllables left his lips, ducking his head as he slipped past Yoshiya to escape down the hall.

"No—I mean, thanks, but…I'm not really hungry. Think I'm just gonna crash."

"We could camp out on the couch," Reiichi called hopefully after him. "Watch the second act of _L'Age d'Or_."

But whether he really thought Dalí's black-and-white classic would hold Fujishima's attention or was just fishing for a reaction of any kind, the suggestion was answered only by the sigh of Reiichi's door swinging closed, and then the weighty silence that always followed the click of the latch against the strike plate, the familiar sound of something being shut out. Reiichi leaned into the wall, tipping sideways until he could rest his temple against Yoshiya's shoulder.

"I don't suppose you made coffee, too?" he asked.

Yoshiya pressed a hand into the small of his back. "Always." Coffee was the first order of business following Kashiwagi emergency calls.

As he led Reiichi toward the kitchen, he glanced once at the mute bedroom door before reminding himself that trying to comfort Fujishima on his own usually ended with the younger boy in tears, even if he hadn't started that way. At least Reiichi was a known quantity. Better to settle him first, figure out what had happened before making any further overtures.

Reiichi's coffee preferences seemed erratic at first blush, but like most of his idiosyncrasies, Yoshiya had been spent long enough in his company to understand the pattern within apparent chaos. This late, the clock on the microwave bending toward midnight, Reiichi never drank anything stronger than a café mélange, with plenty of hot water and cream so the acidity wouldn't upset his delicate stomach. Yoshiya had one waiting for him on the edge of the counter. Yet tonight Reiichi seemed intent on fiddling with it, stirring the mug absently with a spoon and eyeing the French press as if he might add another shot. It was a particular kind of fidgeting with which Yoshiya was all too familiar—the way Reiichi moved when something had thrown him, when he was reevaluating a premise he had taken for granted. Yoshiya watched him with narrowed gray eyes.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice low—and then, when Reiichi reached for the honey instead of answering: "Did Masaya say something to him?"

Reiichi mishandled his spoon, splashing soft drops of foam across the first row of apple crisps. "Masaya? No—at least, not as far as I know. But I doubt it. He was utterly out of his depth."

Yoshiya stepped into the room, caught Reiichi's hand just before he overturned the cinnamon with a careless elbow. "Reiichi," he insisted, the soft way he always said that name when he needed those beautiful black eyes to lift to his, to excise the distance that had suddenly slipped in between them.

Reiichi glanced up at him and then away, over his shoulder, evaluating the abyss Yoshiya could feel at his back. Then he slid his hand into Yoshiya's and led him down the hall to the bedroom that had been theirs for a little over four weeks, his steaming coffee abandoned on the counter among all the other gestures that had fallen short tonight.

Yoshiya barely had the door closed, hadn't even found the light switch yet when something soft fell against his shoulder, the feather weight of Reiichi's head coming to rest along the line of his collarbone. Their hands were still entwined, the arm that should have slid around Reiichi's waist trapped in the pocket of heat between them, so for a long moment Yoshiya simply stood where he was, braced against the cold oak of the door, blinking against the dark and trying to imagine Reiichi's expression from the quiet flute of his breath. Then Reiichi lifted his head, and even in the dull light of the alarm clock Yoshiya could tell he had pressed his lips together, worry and sympathy clouding those bright eyes.

"I underestimated this," he murmured. "I think Kiyomine really made a mess of things this time."

Yoshiya had known that from the first night he found Fujishima half-frozen in the snow, something in the depths of him split and shaking. He chose not to say that. It was a subject he and Reiichi had almost never broached in the last four weeks—the culpability of the other person in all this, the name that flashed so often across the phone Fujishima never picked up. Reiichi knew how he felt about Hosaka well enough not to ask. But right now, this wasn't about his reservations, or the particular blindness that afflicted the Kashiwagi family where their lost sheep was concerned. This was just about piecing Reiichi back together—and later, he hoped, Fujishima.

"Did Masaya…bring him to dinner?" Yoshiya asked into the dark, suddenly wary of a scenario that hadn't occurred to him.

He felt Reiichi shake his head, the vibration echoed in their joined hands. "No, nothing like that. It was just…in the car, on the way home, Fujishima said…" Reiichi sighed, and the sound alone seemed to take all that he had, his body swaying across the unseen gap until their shoulders brushed. "That night, at the hospital…Kiyomine told Ayako she's the only one he cares about, and Fujishima overheard him. And believed him."

For a moment, they were both quiet, letting the weight of those whispered words sink into them. Yoshiya rubbed one hand across his forehead. There were things Reiichi wasn't saying, or perhaps things Fujishima hadn't revealed to him either, but it wasn't hard to fill them in with the memory of Fujishima disappearing into a darkened city, snowblind, sobbing, sagging into his coat. Yoshiya wondered if it was that confession, more than the moment of anger in the hallway, more than the plane taxiing on an icy runway or the empty guardianship form he'd carried like a lead weight in his pocket, that had driven Fujishima out into the storm. Suddenly, it wasn't hard to understand what he had been running from all this time.

But there had to be more to the story, at least where Reiichi was concerned; that moment in the kitchen was still in his head, his companion agitated in the way he always was when the gears were turning, restless with an idea that hadn't finished taking form. Yoshiya gave his hand a squeeze.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, a little guarded.

Reiichi blew out a heavy breath. "I'm thinking that this has to end—and there's only one way for that to happen. They have to see each other again."

Yoshiya started, his hand jerking against that familiar grip. "Reiichi…"

"I know, Yoshiya," Reiichi cut in before he could even start. "I know you don't approve of pushing him. You know I didn't either, at first. But things simply can't go on like this. Fujishima's been cloistered away for a month, and he's still not willing to see him. He has twenty-four voicemails from Kiyomine, and he hasn't listened to one of them." The words were coming a little too fast, sharp with the desperation Yoshiya could feel as Reiichi pressed his free hand into the center of his chest, those anxious fingers digging into his skin. "He still cares about Kiyomine, very deeply. That isn't how you behave when it's over."

Part of Yoshiya felt Reiichi needed a refresher on the ethics of information-gathering by violating the privacy of other people's cell phones. Another part couldn't help wondering if what he'd read as desperation was actually denial, a deep unwillingness to accept that this might be exactly what it looked like when it was over. Neither of them knew from experience; the only person Yoshiya had ever been that close to was right next to him, bound to him in the dark. He kept his focus where it belonged.

"And you don't think Fujishima's doubts are well-founded? About Ayako?" Yoshiya asked. It felt strange to talk that way about someone who was holed up in the bedroom just across the hall, as if he were a parent debating the welfare of a child.

Reiichi hesitated a moment before answering, a little hitch in his voice that was endemic to this conversation. "Last weekend, Ayako was in town for a visit home…she asked Kiyomine to have dinner with her, but he chose to attend Asou's basketball game instead, because he knew Fujishima would be there. He was that anxious to see him." Reiichi's hand curled into his shirt. "I've never known him to refuse Ayako anything. They could fix this, Yoshiya—if Fujishima would just talk to him."

"Reiichi…" Now it was Yoshiya's turn to hesitate, all too aware of the sharp note to Reiichi's voice, as if there were two people in this room who needed convincing. But there was a question that had to be asked, one he had avoided asking for two weeks as the phone began to ring, one Kashiwagi after another on the line. Yoshiya smoothed his thumb over the curve of Reiichi's wrist, tried to find the gentlest way of phrasing this. "Are you sure you're thinking about what's best for Fujishima? Not for Hosaka?"

The second the words left his lips, he wished he hadn't put it that way—Reiichi's hands leapt away from him, the two of them suddenly adrift in the dark, and even blind Yoshiya could imagine the wounded expression on Reiichi's face, the surprise that Yoshiya could think that little of him. The urge to apologize was automatic, but he bit down on that, forced himself to stand silent, in sentinel, waiting for a reply. As a rule, he would give in to Reiichi every time, no matter what it cost him, but this was the one area where he couldn't afford to. Because this wasn't about the two of them—this was about Fujishima, and Yoshiya had sworn never to let that person slip through his fingers again. He thought Reiichi might understand that if their roles had been reversed that night, if he'd been the one to find Fujishima out in the snow.

There was a long moment of strained silence before he felt the flicker of a touch against his fingers, Reiichi's hand sliding back into his. "Maybe that's a part of it," he admitted, so softly Yoshiya had to lean forward to hear him. "I know we haven't talked about it, but…Kiyomine's in a bad way. He's been devastated by this. I don't deny that's on my mind." Then Reiichi lifted his head, and even in the nominal light Yoshiya could tell how serious his expression had become. "But surely you can see that Fujishima isn't doing well, either. Avoiding their old room to the level that he's barely seen Aritomo, the way his fur stands on end whenever the phone rings, that cache of unheard messages…they're suffocating each other, Yoshiya. Some part of Fujishima is still frozen in that moment, and that ache won't ease until he faces it. Even if it's going to end…" Reiichi's inhale was short, as if the words caught in his throat. "…he has to let it end."

It had never occurred to Yoshiya that avoidance itself could be a wound, that perhaps there was some part of Fujishima that couldn't heal in isolation. But he could almost see that now, in the way Fujishima had ducked his head as he fled down the hall, his shoulders hunched as if bowed under a much heavier storm. Reiichi was right on one count: things that were over didn't stay that raw. However this story ended, there was at least one confrontation yet to come.

Yoshiya closed his eyes for a quiet moment, berating himself for being blind to that, and for forcing Reiichi to say it. Then he stepped forward and pulled them together, tucking Reiichi's face into the hollow of his shoulder and resting his cheek against the top of his head.

"All right. I understand," he murmured into soft black hair. "And I'm sorry." He could feel Reiichi relax against him, the dissolution of the tension that wound through him whenever they disagreed, however briefly. Yoshiya pressed one hand into the space between his shoulder blades. "But Reiichi—this isn't necessarily something you can fix. If what Fujishima's doubting is Hosaka's sincerity…that isn't something you can prove for him."

Reiichi shook his head, voice muffled in his wing collar. "I won't have to. Given half a chance, Kiyomine will prove it himself. Trust me, Yoshiya," he added, almost desperately, as his hands clenched into the folds of the blue polo shirt, and Yoshiya swayed from one foot to the other, feeling Reiichi lean into him, their centers of gravity shifting as one.

"I do," he promised. "Always."

He would have been content to stay that way a long time, lost in the small ocean of that movement between them, a rhythm as vital as the tide. But the moment was broken by a sound just beyond the door, the familiar squeak of a floorboard that four weeks had taught Yoshiya to recognize as Fujishima sneaking, poorly, down the old hall, no doubt headed for the kitchen. He felt Reiichi smile into the skin of his neck, a sensation that vanished as the other boy leaned back out of his hold.

"It seems our little sneak thief has rediscovered his appetite," he mused, and Yoshiya was relieved to hear a lilt in his voice again, replacing that hard edge. Reiichi slid one hand up to pat his shoulder. "There'll be cat prints all the way to your apple crisps. Why don't you go out first, see if you can keep him from scampering away again. I'd like to think just another minute about the best way to orchestrate this—a fitting crescendo for an early spring romance."

Yoshiya had his doubts it was going to be that easy. But he did as Reiichi asked nonetheless, slipping out into the hallway and closing the door soundlessly behind him, so as not to alert the cat burglar in the kitchen. It was in Reiichi's nature to be overly optimistic about how all this might end—but however it ended, Yoshiya vowed to be there, just in case Fujishima needed somewhere to run. There would be no more nights lost out in the snow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Break Even: Chapter Three**

As an exemplary student of the cutthroat Kashiwagi approach to business, Reiichi had mastered early the two vital dimensions of any successful strategy: swiftness and surprise. Accordingly, he made the necessary arrangements for the very next weekend. He had a small conflict in the form of a quarterly shareholders' meeting, but that was really no obstacle—his grandfather had a reputation for conducting business everywhere from the blackjack tables of the Mazagan Casino in Casablanca to his favorite table tucked away in the back of a noodle shop in Saigon. Kashiwagi Senior was more than happy to abandon the boardroom for a more desirable location given a good reason—namely, that Reiichi had asked—especially when that location was his favorite hot springs chateau tucked away in the snow-silver mountains, the stage Reiichi had chosen for the peripeteia of Fujishima and Kiyomine's story.

The camouflage of a board meeting made it all the simpler to arrange for one additional Kashiwagi to be present at the resort for the weekend. And as for surprise—well, it was easy enough to lure Fujishima out on a Friday afternoon with the promise of marzipan crepes from the designer sweets shop in Shinjuku, and then it was a simple matter of heading for the mountains for an impromptu weekend vacation, with one quick sojourn at the Okuno family home to collect Yoshiya and four overstuffed suitcases.

Reiichi had filched a few things from Fujishima's closet ahead of time, the outfits that five weeks of careful scrutiny had taught him Fujishima preferred; otherwise, the winter gear Yoshiya had collected was largely Sawa's, but Reiichi didn't expect Fujishima to mind, or even to notice. He was hardly in a position to be too critical, Reiichi decided, since he had dressed himself for their outing in tight jeans and a graphic T-shirt printed with an ethereal butterfly ink splatter, finished with a pair of high white snow boots. He hoped Yoshiya had stuffed that lovely red pea coat of Sawa's into one of those protuberant suitcases; like all members of the Okuno clan, Yoshiya's younger sister shot up four inches every six months, and she'd all but outgrown it already. It tickled Reiichi to think that Fujishima never would.

The chateau was a combination hot springs and winter resort two hours outside the city, deep enough in the mountains that spring was not even a whisper on the glacial wind as the town car pulled up beside the entrance and they stepped out onto the snow-encrusted walk, the bell attendant hurrying to collect their suitcases. It was an old-fashioned establishment, one largely undiscovered by the parvenu, so there was usually no trouble getting a room—though of course, the Kashiwagis had rented the entire chalet for the weekend, just to be sure. Like most of Grandfather's favorite retreats, Reiichi had been staying here since Tsukasa was a fussy baby in a vintage high chair, spitting flawlessly prepared bites of winter squash onto the white linen napery of the chef's table. He was far too accustomed to the place to be impressed by the faux-rustic façade or the palatial scale, a full-service facility that offered diversions from wine tastings and winter sports to a lavish spa, and, of course, the open-air hot springs. Still, there was fun to be had watching Fujishima's jaw flap as he explained the amenities, leading the boy on a tour of the dining room, pools, and private movie theater while Yoshiya dealt with the desk attendant.

It was the perfect backdrop for a grand reconciliation. And yet, as if getting Kiyomine and Fujishima back together were not a momentous enough task, they were barely through the door of their suite before things started going awry.

"What does that mean, they've misplaced our luggage?" Reiichi asked, more calmly than the expression on Yoshiya's face seemed to imply. "We only arrived ten minutes ago. They haven't had time to do anything with it!"

Yoshiya's eyes cut over his shoulder to where Fujishima was investigating the sprawling suite with a rattle of hangers and crinkle of cellophane from the complimentary tray of snacks and candies. "Apparently there was a miscommunication about _which_ Kashiwagi suite the bags were supposed to be delivered to," he said, too softly to be overheard by their lively habitué. "The bellhop dropped them at one of the other rooms."

"Well, if he can't even keep four reservations straight, maybe he isn't fit to work at an establishment of this caliber," Reiichi snapped.

Yoshiya just raised his eyebrows, that look Reiichi recognized all too well as an insinuation that he was overreacting to something trifling because he was worried about something else—but Yoshiya was wrong. He was not overreacting, and it was not too much to expect the freedom to change out of his driving clothes without first traipsing all over the thirty-suite lodge in search of his luggage, and, in so doing, running the risk of crossing paths with certain individuals before the ambience had lulled Fujishima into a receptive mood. What good was delivering hot breakfast to their room or five-star dinners served by candlelight if the basic courtesies slipped through the cracks?

"Is it so much to ask for everything to go perfectly?" he found himself demanding, and then had to admit—reluctantly—that he might have been just a little anxious about other matters, since _everything_ was slightly hyperbolic for four suitcases, however overstuffed. But Yoshiya's expression just softened, and he lifted one hand to soothe the shoulder of Reiichi's greatcoat, the downy black fabric still wet with beads of melted snow.

"Of course not," Yoshiya told him, though Reiichi couldn't tell from his tone if that was quite sincere. "I'm sure they've just been delivered to your grandfather's room. You and Fujishima make yourselves comfortable—I'll see what I can do."

With that, he slipped back out into the hallway and closed the door with a soft click, leaving Reiichi and his slowly ebbing annoyance to see what Fujishima had gotten up to. The younger boy hadn't seemed that bothered by the disappearance of their things, but Reiichi maintained that was only because Fujishima had never known real service and didn't realize what a shortfall they'd suffered.

Now that the luggage crisis seemed to be resolving, it was easier to appreciate the finer points of their accommodations. The whole resort leaned toward an older aesthetic and a muted palette, matched of course with all the modern accoutrements: plush carpeting, a private hot spring pool sunk into the flagstone patio, and a sleek silver Bonavita coffee maker in the kitchen nook, its chrome contours alive with the reflection of the glass-paned gas fireplace. Reiichi shrugged out of his greatcoat and laid it across the shoulders of a hand-carved armchair, smiling at the snow boots kicked off next to the granite hearth. Fujishima had already finished inspecting this room, if the castoff winter gear was any indication.

He found the younger boy in the bedroom, pawing through the large closet like an overcurious kitten investigating a yarn basket.

"Reiichi-sempai! This place is insane. There's like a hundred robes in here!" Fujishima said, peering at Reiichi through a cacophony of sleeves in silk, terry, and microfiber.

Reiichi shook his head. A quick glance told him the robe estimate in the closet was closer to twenty—a perfectly acceptable number for a suite with two king-sized beds and an occupancy of up to four. At the front of the rack, he could see a handful of smaller robes in brighter colors, no doubt slipped into the closet last minute when the concierge got a look at their energetic third guest. At least _one_ division of the custodial service understood what room they were in.

With a sigh, Reiichi fell back onto the nearest bed, propping himself up with one elbow pinned into the thick comforter. "So…" he started, drawing those inquisitive brown eyes back to his and offering Fujishima a winning smile. "My meeting isn't until tomorrow. How would you like to spend the afternoon? Did anything in particular strike your fancy?"

After countless weekends at the lodge with Grandfather—and, often, the somewhat bemused members of the board—he could afford to be gracious and let Fujishima set the agenda. And if, in a sort of secondary way, he was trying to indulge Fujishima into a good mood…well, that couldn't be all bad, considering what was coming.

Fujishima seemed to think for a moment before he flopped down next to Reiichi, the mattress bouncing a little with the echo of his motion. "Hey—do you think we could go sledding?"

"Sledding?" Reiichi repeated, blinking at the ceiling. Trust Fujishima to come up with the one activity he'd never considered…

"Yeah," the boy persisted, his pitch rising as the idea caught fire. "There's this huge hill out back—I saw it when we were in the Ping-Pong room. Looks like it's already got some sled tracks, so I bet they rent them or whatever at the desk." Fujishima rolled over onto his stomach, kicking his socked feet in the air beyond the lip of the bed. "That could be fun, right?"

Reiichi was a little appalled at the idea of _renting_ anything; by the time they'd booked a suite like this one, everything but meals and spa upsells was complimentary. He was a little appalled by the idea of sledding, too, something he couldn't remember doing since Tsukasa was small enough to need a toboggan chauffer. On the other hand, he had invited Fujishima to pick his poison—and there was a certain satisfaction to imagining Yoshiya's expression when they pitched this activity, no doubt pinched long before they got out in the snow. Intuition told him sledding would not be one of Yoshiya's inborn talents. And what better opportunity to doll Fujishima up in Sawa's puffy blue and white parka and pompom hat…

Reiichi smiled at Fujishima and the window beyond him, the first intimation of snowflakes grazing the fogged glass. "Brilliant. Sledding it is."

Nothing was more delightful than watching Yoshiya horribly out of his element.

* * *

It wasn't as delightful as Reiichi had hoped. Thirty minutes in, he was cold, wet, and for the first time in his adult life, he had been caught without the right clothes. A cashmere scarf, wool glove liners, and his tailored Burberry chesterfield were _de rigueur_ for the winter activities Reiichi was accustomed to, but apparently that did not extend to sledding; the cashmere kept out the cold but not the damp, and in no time it had become little more than a wet muff against his face, chapping his raw skin every time he braved the hill on the blue saucer sled that was not nearly so sturdy or maneuverable as the desk attendant had claimed.

As predicted, Yoshiya had been reluctant about the whole enterprise—but only after they'd overruled him and scaled the icy stairs to the top of the hill, a gust of snowflakes cutting through their coats, did it occur to Reiichi that his reluctance might have been well-founded. More to the point, he had never imagined that he might be even worse than Yoshiya at this particular going-on. Certainly, Yoshiya was no picture of grace, plummeting down the hill on his old-style flyer sled with curling metal runners—but it was Reiichi who found himself careening all over the slope, descending far too fast and struggling to steer the diabolical saucer while the slippery lining of his long coat threatened at any moment to send him slithering out of the sled altogether. He felt like Phaethon at the helm of Helios' runaway chariot—and Fujishima shouting after him to _put it all on one cheek, Reiichi-sempai, and then all on the other_ , accompanied by a very uncouth pantomime, was not helpful in the least.

The hill itself was nicely groomed, the snow deep and even across the steep slope and bound on one side by a carefully maintained set of stairs accented with fairy lights wrapped around the rails—but that was clearly all just puff to dress up what was inherently a barbaric activity, something best not attempted once one had grown out of snow pants with suspenders.

Only one of them was having any luck with it, and that was Fujishima, of course—their unstoppable little _bon vivant_ , tearing down the slope on his back and kicking his feet off the front of his saucer as if he were riding an Olympic luge, while the fabric of Sawa's parka rippled in the freezing headwind. Somehow Fujishima seemed immune to the chill—and though he had wiped out twice now, rolling halfway down the hill and coming up with his chestnut hair bespeckled with white flakes, he'd also achieved mastery over his sled much faster than either of his companions and had practically lapped them at this point, already halfway up the stairs after a solo run when Reiichi reached the top of the hill and paused, grudgingly resettling his saucer in the footprint-riddled snow.

He was not accustomed to being flummoxed by thick rounds of plastic, nor was it a feeling he relished. How Fujishima, whose grasp of Newtonian physics was tenuous at best, managed to make this look so easy, he really couldn't fathom. Perhaps it was all dependent on being a child at heart…or a child in stature.

With a heady thunk, a red saucer landed in the snow next to his. Reiichi glanced down to find Fujishima tightening the laces of his boots, blinking up at him through the crust of white the last run had left in his bangs. "You're going this time, right, Reiichi-sempai?" he asked, looking nonplussed. Reiichi tried to offer him a blithe smile, but the expression felt a little strange on his frozen cheeks.

"Of course," he said smoothly, as if stalling were the furthest thing from his mind. At his back, he heard Yoshiya shift his feet in the snow, and knew without looking over his shoulder that those sharp gray eyes had locked on him again, reiterating without words his offer, at last summiting, that they could ride down together. Reiichi _did_ have a keen understanding of the laws of conservation and angular momentum, however—so as appealing as it was to imagine Yoshiya wrapped around him, keeping the wind at bay, he wasn't climbing onto the front of that Molson runner until Yoshiya's steering had improved enough to outweigh the inevitable increase in momentum. A threshold he so far hadn't crossed.

Perhaps the most vexatious part of the whole ordeal was that, in any other circumstance, Yoshiya would have come to his rescue by now, commandeering the sleds and whisking him off to the lodge bar for a revitalizing café au lait. But because he felt guilty for luring Fujishima here under false pretenses, a silent collaborator to Reiichi's _arrière-pensée_ , Yoshiya was determined to mush along until Fujishima tired himself out, which Reiichi was beginning to fear might simply never happen.

Absently, his eyes wandered over the contours of the chateau, the hot springs pools an intimation of rising steam beyond the rustic fascia. Kiyomine should have arrived by now, along with the rest of the Kashiwagi delegation—and though it certainly wasn't guilt, there was an unsettled feeling in his stomach, anticipating the reunion he had carefully devised. He had made it clear to Kiyomine, at a clandestine dinner earlier in the week, that facilitator was the only role he would play in this; talking Fujishima around was something his cousin would have to do on his own. Still, he couldn't help wondering where Kiyomine would first make his appearance…in the hot springs, perhaps? A soothing setting for such a delicate situation...

He lost the thought as Fujishima straightened and sunk a sharp elbow into his ribs. "Like I said—one cheek, then the other," the boy repeated, pumping his hips from side to side in what Reiichi hoped was an exaggeration. "Or, you know, if you can't get the hang of that…" Fujishima took two steps back—then he leapt forward and landed on his stomach on the red saucer, flying off down the hill in an eruption of startled snowflakes.

Reiichi was about to call after him to be careful with his face—his most redeeming feature—when someone else shot past him, practically knocking into him before whoever it was dove onto the defective blue saucer and took off after Fujishima. Reiichi's breath caught in his lungs, the cold sharp in his raw throat.

"Yoshiya—" he started to reprimand—but Yoshiya was still right next to him, staring after the disappearing sledders with a deepening frown. Reiichi followed his gaze to a black down jacket and familiar dark hair, a long body held in a severe pike as Kiyomine burst onto the scene at last, hot on Fujishima's tail.

Fujishima must have heard the sound of someone coming after him, because as Reiichi watched, he spun his saucer around with aggravating dexterity, a laugh on his upturned lips, no doubt expecting Yoshiya or Reiichi himself to be careering after him. Then his eyes widened, and in that split second of inattention he hit one of the accidental moguls the passage of their sleds had cut into the hill and veered off into Kiyomine, the red saucer smashing straight into the blue. With his innate Kashiwagi finesse, Reiichi felt Kiyomine probably could have kept hold of his sled—but he chose to go down instead, the two of them turning end over end, black and white jackets a monochromatic blur as they tumbled headlong down the slope, finally spinning out into a deep bank at the bottom where they lay like stunned snow angels, side by side in the heavy drifts. Reiichi pressed two icy fingers to his temple.

Well, Kiyomine certainly had his attention now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Break Even: Chapter Four  
**

For a long moment, Takara lay where he'd landed, chest heaving and his pulse pounding in his ears from the adrenaline of the assault. All he could see was the wash of gray storm clouds in the sky above him and the static of snowflakes spiraling down into his face, and off to his right the black blur that was Kiyomine—Kiyomine who had completely blindsided him, who was just a scatter of fractured images from the blitz, their bodies toppling over each other in an explosion of powder.

It reminded Takara of the one time he'd really wiped out on his bike, how suddenly there seemed to be too many parts, limbs and pedals and handlebars cartwheeling through the air until he hit the ground, down one chain ring and up one shiner. At least the snow had been soft, and he seemed to be in one piece; if anything, he was pretty sure it was his elbow that had sunk into Kiyomine's ribs, right in the sweet spot of the solar plexus. Maybe that was why he could hear Kiyomine breathing so hard, trying to get his wind back.

_Kiyomine_. Takara had to roll up on one elbow to get a better look at him, to prove to himself that it wasn't just a mirage that had blitzed him in the snow. Kiyomine looked exactly the same and more handsome than he ever remembered, and something in Takara gave a great, wrenching ache as he studied those familiar features, the same dark eyes and the same smirk on lips chapped with the cold, the same black hair sticking to his forehead as Kiyomine lifted a glove and swiped snow out of his face. The smudges under his eyes were new, though. Takara resisted the urge to reach up and trace one—to remember all those sleepless nights when he'd clutched his phone in his hands and watched messages coming in that he didn't read, messages that meant Kiyomine was lying awake somewhere, too. Takara probably had matching smudges, if the cold had left any color in his skin.

Kiyomine hadn't said anything yet, just lay there staring back at him, a thousand thoughts Takara couldn't read swirling in his eyes. After all this time, Kiyomine was right in front of him, and Takara's heart was a whole percussion line, exhilaration that had nothing to do with their death-defying tumble making his hands tremble in his gloves. He didn't think he'd realized until this moment just how much he missed Kiyomine; the other boy was like a magnet, everything in Takara longing to close the distance between them and…and what? Shake him? Shove a handful of snow down the back of his jacket? Pounce on him and bury him up to his neck? Or maybe just stumble to his feet and make a run for it, back up the hill to Reiichi and Okuno, hazy figures he couldn't quite focus on because everything in him was focused on Kiyomine instead.

Distantly, he realized that this was all a colossal Kashiwagi setup, understood for the first time why his sempais had been so accommodating all week, taking him out for dinner in Chinatown twice and coming home from student council meetings armed with double fudge chocolate cake. He'd thought that was just guilt over everything that happened with Masaya; it hadn't occurred to him that it might be guilt for something Reiichi hadn't done yet. But even that insight was just a wisp in his mind, gone as soon as he'd had it—because Kiyomine was sitting up now, too, opening his mouth, and everything in Takara was gearing up for a fight, trying to brace himself for all the things Kiyomine might or might not say.

Kiyomine blew the bangs out of his face, then leaned back on one long arm, smirking through the curtain of lightly falling snow. "Hey, shorty," he said.

It was the last thing he'd expected Kiyomine to say. Takara sucked in a sharp breath, the familiar words echoing like a shout in his ears—and then all of a sudden he was laughing, all that tension that had been wound so tight inside of him transformed into mirth and surprise and heady longing, such a sweet feeling he could hardly taste the bitter at the back of his mouth. Before he even realized it, he had reached out to Kiyomine, shoving the taller boy's shoulder with the blunt of his palm.

"You psycho—I always knew you'd be a terror on the slopes. It's sledding, not bumper cars!" he accused, though the words probably weren't that impressive since he couldn't stop smiling, his grin so wide he could feel the pull of it in his cheeks. Kiyomine chuckled right along with him, and the sound almost took Takara's breath away, one of those vital sounds that had been missing for five weeks, replaced by the rattle of Kiyomine's ringtone, blaring unanswered in the dark.

This was why he'd had to run—why he couldn't come back to his and Kiyomine's room after that night, why he couldn't bring himself to listen to one more message the other boy left on his phone. He'd known right from the start that with Kiyomine in front of him, he'd be totally helpless, caught in the other boy's wake, tempted to give in and go back to exactly what they were before Kiyomine had even said his name. He knew that, but he couldn't seem to stop himself, digging the fingertips of his gloves into that thick black jacket as Kiyomine shook his head and chased a shower of snow down onto his broad shoulders.

Kiyomine shrugged, not hard enough to dislodge his hand. "Just trying to shake things up. Seemed like somebody needed to take this to the next level." As one, he and Takara turned to look back up the slope, where Okuno was still trying to talk Reiichi onto the front of his sled, some silent negotiation going on between the figures at the top of the hill.

Takara laughed in spite of himself. Even after five weeks apart, Kiyomine could still read him so well. Not that he was going to say anything, since it was his idea, but sledding with Okuno and Reiichi had been a massive letdown, about as exciting as the lawn bowling tournament he'd gotten caught in once when Kiyomine and Reiichi dragged him to a Kashiwagi birthday party for their uncle Mimori. Reiichi was obviously not into sledding, and he'd noticed Okuno taking the same path time after time, until the metal bottoms of his sled had worn two long grooves into the snow and he didn't have to steer. He hadn't realized until Kiyomine blitzkrieged him halfway down that this was what he'd been craving—the adrenaline rush of flying headfirst down the slope, out of control and in love with that feeling, wide open and ready for the crash. He hadn't realized how much of that rush had to do with Kiyomine himself. Probably it was Kiyomine he'd imagined sledding with from the very first run.

As if reading his mind, Kiyomine shifted in the snow and tilted his head toward the pine tree at the base of the stairs, its trunk bracing an enormous toboggan that Takara knew hadn't been there before. "We'll go faster with two," Kiyomine said—and that was all he said, leaving the offer unspoken as he watched Takara for a long, silent moment. Takara felt his gaze like a physical touch, his face suddenly burning up under Okuno's sister's puffball hat.

There was a part of him—the part that had stubbornly not picked up the phone for five weeks, his fingers white-knuckled around the protective plastic case—that wanted to refuse, wary of going on like everything was normal when there was still so much unsaid between them. But Kiyomine was an addiction, and Takara couldn't give him up already, not when he'd just barely gotten a taste of what he'd been missing.

"Race ya to the tree—loser has to carry the sled up the stairs!" Takara shouted as he shot to his feet and took off, churning through the drifts with Kiyomine hot on his heels, the lonely red saucer abandoned in the snow.

For the next hour, Takara forgot everything—the cold and the blood blister forming along the side of his big toe and the phone calls from his father that had slowly dried up after he arrived in Ethiopia, and even the shadow of his empty house, which in just one more week would become somebody else's house, all the things that didn't matter to anyone anymore thrown out to make room for a new family, maybe one that had a prayer of making it a home again. He couldn't think about any of that with Kiyomine tucked up behind him on the sled, wrapped over him like an enormous coat, taking the brunt of the wind as they flew down the hill again and again.

Reiichi and Okuno stuck around for another five or ten lukewarm minutes, taking maybe one run for every three of Kiyomine and Takara's and lingering at the bottom of the slope like he might be trying to get their attention. Okuno in particular seemed to be giving Takara significant looks, like he was waiting for a blinked-out SOS; but the only letter Takara remembered from Morse code was the E, and anyway there was no chance of him stopping now. He loved Reiichi and Okuno-sempai, and he'd loved living with them, but this was a different kind of fun, the kind he hadn't had in five weeks. Even when his legs started to ache from the strain of sprinting up those stairs he couldn't bear to stop, breathless and giddy with the feeling of Kiyomine pressed close to his back, their hands overlapping on the yellow rope reins. Kiyomine who was up for anything he wanted to try—breaking their speed record, going down backward, steering into the moguls so it was like a winter roller coaster. Kiyomine who lost his grip when they hit one gigantic bump and exploded off the back of the sled like a parachute opening behind Takara, the toboggan suddenly feather light and fearlessly airborne. Takara doubled over clutching his stomach as soon as the sled stopped, still gasping for breath by the time Kiyomine met him at the bottom.

They kept at it until the evening came on, the faraway flicker of the sun at the cloudy horizon casting the shadows of pine trees like black cutouts across the snow at the base of the hill. Takara shivered and stomped in his boots, gazing out over the anarchy they'd made of the once-smooth slope. Reiichi and Okuno had disappeared at some point, taking the discarded saucer sleds with them—probably back to the lodge, where Reiichi had promised the baristas at the coffee shop could make a killer cinnamon hot chocolate. Actually, a hot drink didn't sound so bad to him either; now that he'd stopped moving, he could feel the cold sinking into his bones, and his fingers were sort of half numb in his gloves, soaked through at some point during the powder plow. He shucked off the gloves and stuffed them into his pockets, flexed his hands to get the blood moving before anything turned black.

A heavy palm settled onto the crest of his pompom hat, and Takara looked up to find Kiyomine smirking at him, his other arm wrapped around the toboggan that was almost taller than he was. "Cold, shorty?" he asked, looking all too smug to be like ten feet tall and burning like a furnace.

Takara wrinkled his nose. "That happens to some of us without extra padding, you gigantic oaf." Then he grinned and made a grab for Kiyomine's jacket, sliding his cold hands under layers of down and fleece until he found the bonfire of the other boy's stomach. Kiyomine swore under his breath and jerked back out of range, trapping both of Takara's wrists with his enormous hand.

"What, are you made of ice?" he groused, looking grumpy in that way that always made Takara laugh, because it was a look only he could get out of Kiyomine. But his laugh caught in his throat a second later as Kiyomine lifted his captive hands and blew warm air across them, his lips just centimeters from Takara's instantly still fingers. Takara could feel that breath all the way down to the base of his spine, though it turned into a shiver partway, his whole body suddenly electrified, his hairs standing up like his jacket had disappeared and left him at the mercy of the cold.

That was just like Kiyomine, to take a moment that was nothing and catch him completely off guard, unprepared for whatever the dark-haired boy would do next. Takara couldn't remember if those types of things had always made his heart pound like this, like he was back on the hill again, racing into the wind. But there was something different about him too, the way his eyes locked on Takara's for the endless moment they stood there without moving, the only sound in the world the soft huff of their breath against the frigid air. Then Kiyomine lowered their joined hands, his thumb pressing hard into the divot of Takara's wrist.

"Takara," he started, and the name itself was like a fatal blow, strong enough to shake Takara to his core. "Listen. There's something I have to say—something I've been wanting to say ever since you moved out."

Just as he had with Masaya, Takara knew what was coming. This was the moment he'd been running from for five weeks, and all at once he was terrified, every atom in him screaming to get away, to stop them again right on the brink of this, before Kiyomine could push them over. Kiyomine had rehearsed this, he was sure of it—had spent a week crafting exactly the best way to put this into words. Takara wanted to slap his hands over his ears, but they were frozen in Kiyomine's hold. Those dark eyes were boring into him, tearing down his defenses before he'd even had a chance to steady himself.

Kiyomine would say whatever he was going to say, and then…then what? What happened if Takara still didn't believe him? What happened if he did? With sudden clarity, Takara realized that whatever came after this moment, they would never just be Takara and Kiyomine again, as they had been in the snow, no lines or boundaries or words or promises between them, with nothing that could be broken because nothing had been given. Whatever Kiyomine said next was going to smash his heart or steal it, and Takara wasn't sure he was ready for that, to trust something so fragile to those hands that had left him shattered.

He couldn't do this. Not yet—not now. Not like this.

Kiyomine took a deep breath. "That night, with Ayako—"

"Don't." It was barely a whisper, but Kiyomine stopped anyway, all the rest of those unbearable words bitten off as Takara tore his hands away, stumbling back a step. "Just…don't say it," he finished, not caring that he was begging, that he was showing all of his cards. Then he turned and ran, headed for the warm lights of the lodge, not caring about the cold or the gloves that flapped along as they hung out of his pockets, like demented hands trying to catch him, hold him there in the snow.

He almost expected to hear footsteps pounding after him, knew Kiyomine could overtake him in just a few strides. But there was no sound from behind him, and when he glanced back all he could see was the hazy silhouette of Kiyomine still standing at the base of the hill, a smear of black against the white of the snow—Kiyomine letting him go one more time. Takara put his head down, half-blind with the tears that froze on his cheeks even before they could fall.


	5. Chapter 5

**Break Even: Chapter Five**

The rec room was deserted. It made it easier for Kiyomine to push the ping-pong tables out of his way and shove one of them up against the wall on its short side, constructing a single-player court with the floor-to-ceiling windows at his back. He would have done it anyway, but it was nice to do what he wanted without being nagged by any other would-be players. Luckily, the lodge was deserted this weekend except for Kashiwagis and the corporation's shareholders, and ping-pong was probably too much exercise for most of those ancient fat cats. The solitude felt good, like a fragment of the cold night he'd brought inside with him, wrapped around him in place of his down jacket slung over one of the spectators' chairs as he sent the ball sailing into the wall over and over, the sharp staccato of plastic on wood and drywall heavy in his ears.

Ping-pong wasn't really Kiyomine's game, but it was pretty much the only option for blowing off some steam at this stuffy resort, mostly geared toward senile millionaires and their heirs cut from the same cloth as Masaya and Reiichi, who were content to chill in the mud baths with the old farts instead of actually getting up and moving. around He had to do something with all of this restless energy—the energy that had built up in him like an electrical charge as he watched Takara walk away into the lengthening shadows, stopped himself short of running after him, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him and just making him listen for one second, the way he hadn't listened once over the last five weeks, because he wouldn't even pick up the phone—

Kiyomine swung too wildly and had to pause to dig the ping-pong ball out from under the drink cart, beads of condensation rolling down the slant of the ice-water pitcher when he bumped his head on the underside of the top shelf and set the glasses clinking on their decorated tray. He lost it twice more before he got back into the rhythm, the steady sway of the bat moving from side to side calming the throb of the blood in his clenched fingers.

He wasn't mad at Takara. He was mad at Reiichi, for setting up all these rules about boundaries and neutral turf instead of letting Kiyomine just kidnap Takara and drag him off on a vacation of their own, away from all the meddlers and the prying eyes and the convenient retreat of an enormous, sprawling lodge for Takara to lose himself in when things got rough. He was mad at Reiichi because he'd needed Reiichi to make this happen at all, because Reiichi was the only person who could give him a chance to say what he needed to say. He was mad at Reiichi for being the person Takara ran to. He was mad at himself for ever giving Takara a reason to run in the first place.

All those weeks he'd spent alone in the dorms, staring across the room at the empty bed that he hadn't touched, hadn't even made, the sheet and cover still kicked sloppily off one side the way Takara had left it, there was one thought at the forefront of Kiyomine's mind: this was how it felt to have someone walk out on you. At first that thought had been angry, something that scorched him like a brand as he listened through the songs on Takara's MP3 player, stuffed under his pillow and therefore missed by Reiichi's minions when they'd come by to clear out his stuff, and when he called Takara's phone over and over and listened to the endless ringing on the line, so aggravating because it meant Takara hadn't turned the phone off, was lying somewhere too and was just ignoring him, cutting him out like a weed or a cancer, something that had grown poisonous and sickly between them. Those first nights, when he fell asleep with all the lights on and the TV blaring, it was his last thought, teeth clenched against the darkness of the pillow he'd stolen off the empty bed, the pillow that still smelled like Takara's cheap aloe-scent shampoo: this was how it felt to have someone walk out on you.

But as the days wore on, as he ran out of his own shampoo and started using up Takara's one handful at a time, and bullied Aritomo into teaching him how to use the washing machine because Reiichi had no clue, the anger burned out, and suddenly he wasn't just thinking about how Takara had walked out on him. He was thinking about all the times he'd walked out on Takara, too, all the little slights he'd answered with the same wall of silence he was getting now. Walking out had been a way of life for Kiyomine, whenever he couldn't handle something—the boxing gym, and Masaya, and kendo with his grandfather. It was just one more method for getting his way. He'd never realized how much it hurt the person left behind. He'd lost count of the nights he lay there counting the pockmarks in the white ceiling, regretting every time he'd left Takara alone.

So now that he was trying to make it right, how was it possible that he was still getting nowhere?

Kiyomine served to himself and caught the ball on the backhand, returning it low over the shallow net. It wasn't like he'd expected the whole thing to go perfectly on the first try—Takara was a hothead, and admittedly he'd made a few mistakes, but he was here, wasn't he, at this starched ego-stroke of a vacation lodge that wasn't his or Takara's scene, trying to tell that shorty what he wanted to hear, and Takara wouldn't let him get it out. He'd even prepared five different apologies—held back a little on the first one, just in case this was a hard sell and he needed to go up from there.

And he could deal if he'd pissed Takara off, if he'd picked the wrong moment or put his size-twelve foot in his mouth, or any of those other things Reiichi had warned him not to do when they met for dinner at his cousin's favorite Austrian café five days before and Reiichi laid down the ground rules for the weekend. But the moment had been perfect. All that energy and excitement, the immediate spark between them that had first made him interested in Takara almost a year ago—it was all still there, alive and electric on his tongue as he folded himself over Takara on the sled, swore he could feel the shorter boy's heart beating right through his ridiculously puffy white coat. Takara had felt it too; Kiyomine could see it in his eyes as they stood at the bottom of the slope, just inches apart, skin on skin. He'd had everything he wanted right there in his hands…how had it all slipped away before he'd even said anything?

As a brilliant, good-looking, and talented member of the Kashiwagi clan, Kiyomine was used to getting whatever he wanted without even trying. But Takara had been a challenge since day one. Nothing had ever been as hard as making it work with his roommate, turbulent as a typhoon and about as tall as a garden gnome…and nothing had ever been so worth it, either, because nothing gave him the same rush he got when Takara smiled right at him, just for him, like Kiyomine was the only one who gave him that feeling. He wanted to make Takara happy, and Takara was happiest with him. He could see that, and Reiichi could see that, even obnoxious, interfering Masaya could probably see that—so why couldn't Takara? Why wouldn't Takara let Kiyomine show him that he'd learned his lesson, that he never wanted to put any expression but a smile on that face again?

He was out of sync with the ball; it glanced off the side of the paddle and winged off to the right, only to be caught midair by a pale, decisive hand as Masaya stepped into the rec room. Kiyomine straightened slowly, exchanging a look with his older brother. Apparently he'd used up the time obnoxious, interfering Masaya would leave him in peace. He had dressed down a little from when they'd arrived a few hours earlier, though that was relative with Masaya—nobody else walked around a lodge like this is a silk button-down and shortwing blucher dress shoes.

Masaya took in the whole room at a glance in that irritating way he had, his expression utterly blank in the half second before his dark eyes came back to Kiyomine, sharp like they always were when he was being evaluated and found wanting. Then Masaya held the ping-pong ball up between two fingers, like it was an auction paddle and he was bidding on a new yacht.

"Seems like you could use a partner," he said smoothly, picking up a paddle and positioning himself on the far side of a different table, one of the few Kiyomine had left in place. Kiyomine stood his ground for a second before reluctantly trooping after him and setting up on the other side. He did his damnedest to avoid Masaya whenever possible—but once the space-time barrier had been breached, their interactions were over faster if he just went along with Masaya's whims, as much as he could stand anyway.

Masaya wasn't as good at ping-pong as the wall, and the first few volleys were short, Kiyomine's shots landing hard on the outer edge of the court and disappearing under the neighboring tables. Masaya didn't bother to pick them up, just grabbed a basket of scuffless white balls off the equipment cart and used them up one at a time, half his shots dead-ending into the short net. Masaya had that same irritating tendency to be good at everything, though, and three minutes in he was adept enough to move on to the part Kiyomine had been dreading: volleying and talking at the same time.

"So," Masaya started, breaking through the squall of Kiyomine's thoughts with his voice and an accelerating lob, "did you screw it up?"

"No," Kiyomine snapped, returning too hard and sending the ball into the windows without touching the other side of the table. Masaya waited until the click of the breakaway ball rolling over polished floorboards had died off before choosing another one from the basket. "He didn't give me a chance," Kiyomine admitted, more quietly, focusing on keeping his tone and his shot level so he didn't have to watch that smug expression crawl over Masaya's face again.

His sigh was almost as bad. "These things take time, Kiyomine," Masaya told him—the same thing Masaya had been telling him over the phone for five weeks. Whenever he got so much as a text from his brother these days, Kiyomine expected it to be just those four words— _these things take time_.

"He's had time," he couldn't stop himself from retorting, the ball whipping away from his bat with too much topspin and barely clearing the net. "It's not helping. He won't even listen to me. How am I supposed to apologize to someone when he won't even hear me out?"

Masaya gave a sharp look over his glasses as the ball eluded him and ricocheted off the drink cart. "Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing," he replied—definitely a quote from somebody, or a hell of an insight from someone who didn't have any friends, unless you counted the cutthroat business and family acquaintances that Kashiwagis seemed to inherit right along with Ming vases and government bonds. Kiyomine didn't. Masaya grabbed another ball and flicked it his way. "And if you're not going to be careful with your friends, it's a good idea to have more than one. At what point will you consider the possibility that what you had with Fujishima can't be repaired?"

"That's not an option," Kiyomine shot back, missing the ball altogether. In spite of himself, he could feel his temper slipping, his fingers clenching tighter and tighter around the paddle's inlaid wood handle.

Masaya gave him that look he hated, that look he'd been getting since he was a child and his tantrums involved a belly flop and actually kicking his feet. "Kiyomine—" he started.

"You don't get it!" Kiyomine shouted, losing the last of his patience and slamming his paddle down onto the green fiberboard. "I can't _replace_ him, Masaya. He's not just a friend—I love him, okay?"

Kiyomine didn't really hear the words until they came out of his own mouth, and then he went dead quiet, the echo of his last admission reverberating even louder somehow than the bang of his ping-pong paddle crashing down on the table. Masaya's expression was infuriatingly blank, like those three syllables hadn't surprised him at all; Kiyomine wished he could say the same, but he hadn't realized until he voiced it that that was what it meant, wanting to make Takara his, to make him smile, to chase the cold from his skin with his own skin. But he'd have to speed through the five stages of comprehension, because Masaya was shifting in his stance, the high-end rubber of his shoes squeaking on the floorboards as he laid down his paddle as well and crossed his arms over his Hugh & Crye dress shirt.

"Well," Masaya said, as if this were any other business transaction he was negotiating, "I suggest you organize your thoughts before you confront him, and start with the apology, not the confession. Bad form to confess to someone who isn't speaking to you."

"Why should I take advice from you?" Kiyomine grumbled, more annoyed that he'd revealed all that to Masaya than by the advice per se. "You haven't had a second date since I was in grade school."

"Touché," Masaya conceded. He watched Kiyomine for another long moment, and then headed for the door, pausing with one hand on the frame to find his brother's eyes over the slope of his shoulder. "All that work you've been doing these last few weeks…I didn't think you'd gone that far just to give up," he murmured.

Kiyomine bristled, but caught the retort on the tip of his tongue, recognizing at the last second that this was just another of Masaya's tactics, trying to get his goat. Masaya knew him well enough to know he'd never considered giving up. Slowly, Kiyomine flattened his hand against the cool fiberboard of the table, feeling the blood slow in his veins as he took a deep breath.

"You suck at ping-pong," he said, the closest to gratitude he could really access.

Masaya chuckled, a ghost of a smile settling at the corners of his lips. "Well, in that case, I guess you'd better work on recruiting a better partner," he replied, tipping his head toward the hallway and the vast expanse of the lodge beyond. Then he glided out into the corridor, disappearing as soundlessly as he'd arrived and leaving Kiyomine staring through his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling glass, the flicker of new snow descending on the withered winter garden and balancing out the white inside, fourteen spotless ping-pong balls scattered over the polished cherry floor.

Kiyomine took one more look around the rec room, his limbs a lot looser than when he'd first picked up the paddle. Then he headed out into the hallway and made for his private suite, stocked with an expensive minibar, a seventy-inch flatscreen, and a dozen video games on demand. Reiichi had advised him to get a room with two kings, in case Takara wanted to jump ship in terms of room assignment, but Kiyomine had been wise enough to steer around that shipwreck—he never wanted to stare across the vast space of an empty room at an empty bed again. By the end of the weekend, he'd definitely convince Takara to move back in with him, for good.

Kiyomine nodded to himself, his breath suddenly easy in his lungs. That he loved Takara didn't change what he'd come here to do, or how he was going to do it. Takara was everything he needed, and he was what Takara needed, too—and he'd just keep at that, relentlessly, until he'd drilled it through the other boy's exceptionally thick skull.

He had all night to brush up on apology #2.


	6. Chapter 6

**Break Even: Chapter Six  
**

Perhaps the best thing about Grandfather's taste in resorts, in Reiichi's estimation, was that he never patronized one that neglected to offer a full-service spa. Really there was no better way to unwind after a grueling shareholders' meeting—or an equally taxing afternoon of tagging along with Fujishima on a misguided sledding venture, at the mercy of the elements and his underclassman's childlike enthusiasm—than lying supine on a cushioned massage table with a flute of champagne at his elbow and the scent of lemongrass warming his bare skin while exceptionally skilled hands soothed his frayed nerves.

Of course, Reiichi wasn't one to be miserly about such a sumptuous experience: he always signed Yoshiya up to join him for a couples' massage, over the other boy's unfounded protests. An eighty-minute deep-tissue massage was infinitely more enjoyable when he had someone to talk to, especially now that the lodge staff knew to move the massage tables much closer together in advance of his reservation. There was nothing relaxing about having to shout across the room instead of conversing in the intimate murmur that such a situation really called for.

Yoshiya never seemed to enjoy the whole pastiche as much as Reiichi did, but that was because Yoshiya was far too stoic and had no sense for how to get the most out of these things. Fortunately for him, Reiichi had long ago started taking such matters into his own hands.

"So, how can I rejuvenate your evening, Mr. Kashiwagi?" asked a professionally friendly voice somewhere above him, a woman who was just an impression of lavender and sage massage oils and practiced fingers working the tension out of his neck. When he tipped his head, he could see Yoshiya laid out to his right, stiff as usual under the full-body sheet he always insisted on, instead of the simple monogrammed towel that lay across Reiichi's hips.

"I'll start with the hot stone treatment," Reiichi replied, before catching the eye of Yoshiya's masseuse through the blush of candlelight that softened the ochre walls. "And Yoshiya needs a Swedish massage, medium pressure, long strokes. Don't let him try to get away with using lotions instead of oils—the sandalwood oil soaks into the skin so much better," he added, reaching out to brush a languid hand down the curve of Yoshiya's bicep.

Out of the corner of his eye, Reiichi thought he caught the flicker of a smile on the masseuse's face—but of course all the staff members at the chateau were consummate professionals, and all the man asked was, "Any area in particular giving you trouble, sir?" as he pulled the sheet halfway down Yoshiya's back.

"My shoulders are enough," Yoshiya muttered, his voice somewhat muffled by the cushion under his head, though not enough to disguise that deceit. Reiichi scoffed.

"Don't be absurd, Yoshiya," he scolded, before addressing himself to the man rubbing sandalwood oil into the hollows of his palms. "It's his lower back," he corrected, ignoring the twitch of Yoshiya's eyebrows drawing together—what use was a massage if he refused to focus on the area of agitation? "Too much of the afternoon spent lugging that sled up the hill."

He spared a brief thought for their absent companion, wondering how things were going between the two they'd left gamboling in the snow; but he lost curiosity about that as he sank into the warmth of superb aromatherapy and the sedative effect of hot basalt stones smoldering against his spine. He'd brought the two boys together—surely Kiyomine could take it from there. After forty minutes of torment on that perilous saucer sled, he'd earned a little relaxation.

Lazily, he watched Yoshiya through the haze of his half-lidded eyes, lamenting not for the first time that Yoshiya never seemed to appreciate him like this, softly splayed and deliciously _dishabille_. Maybe he could blame that on the other boy's missing glasses, neatly folded on the small rattan table beneath a pitcher of cucumber water. Or perhaps Yoshiya just wasn't close enough to appreciate the full effect…he spent a moment pondering whether he could coerce his companion into learning the art of massage before that thought, too, drifted away from him, lost in a pleasant fog of oil and lavender on slowly warming skin.

Reiichi always booked massages for upward of seventy minutes—any less than an hour and it was barely worth disrobing—but they were hardly halfway through the allotted time when there was a sudden clatter of troubled footsteps on the flagstones of the foyer. A moment later, the tranquility of the room was shattered by the arrival of an unexpected guest—who else but Fujishima, looking disheveled and half frozen in his long-sleeved T-shirt, Sawa's white coat and wool hat apparently misplaced somewhere along the way. He also looked very surprised to find Reiichi and Yoshiya as they were, reclining on the tables and bare to the waist, though what else he'd expected to find inside a massage suite Reiichi wasn't sure.

"Whoa," Fujishima blurted out, backpedaling and bumping into the doorframe as if he might skitter right back out into the waiting area. "Sorry. The girl at the desk said I could come in, but…" He glanced between Reiichi and Yoshiya again, his eyebrows inching up under the disorder of his chestnut bangs. "I mean, I knew you were getting a massage, I just didn't realize you were getting one—like, together."

Yoshiya had gone rigid again, thirty-five minutes of deep-tissue massage erased by one little interruption. Reiichi rolled his eyes, leaning up on his elbows so he could catch those wide eyes without straining his neck.

"Don't be dramatic, Fujishima. We're both perfectly decent." It was a shame, really, how perfectly decent Yoshiya always was under that sheet. "What's the matter? Did something happen with Kiyomine?" Reiichi asked, feeling a tiny cord of tension knotting into his own shoulders as those words left his lips. Things had seemed to be going so well when he and Yoshiya exited the stage, not receiving so much as a parting glance from the two boys enamored of their wild toboggan…

Even though he was visibly upset, Fujishima still had the presence of mind to shoot him a flat look. "Aren't you going to ask what he's doing here?" he pressed, with that certain tone that implied all the Kashiwagi machinations weren't as invisible as Reiichi had hoped.

He was a little embarrassed to be flustered. "Well, I just naturally assumed…"

"Yeah, don't even bother," Fujishima suggested, with an indelicate snort. He opened his mouth, but then hesitated, shooting an awkward glance at the masseuses who had politely excused themselves to one corner of the room, refolding towels and replacing the candles that had begun to gutter in their own wax. It was one of those quiddities Reiichi could never comprehend—the unwillingness of those of lesser fortune to talk in front of staff, who were trained to be thoroughly courteous and carefully disinterested. But it seemed whatever had happened was more pressing than his discomfort, because after a moment Fujishima struggled on, digging his fidgeting hands deep into the pockets of his snow pants as if that could hide their shaking, the tremble Reiichi suspected had very little to do with the blue tinge of his pursed lips.

"It's not that something happened…well, like—not really," he mumbled, swiping a hand across his cheeks. From the way Yoshiya's shoulders had leapt up to his ears, Reiichi was sure he wasn't the only one who'd noticed the wetness of Fujishima's eyes, the tears he fought back with a sniff. "It's just…sledding was so perfect, Reiichi-sempai. _So_ perfect. It was everything I wanted, and…"

That didn't inherently sound like a bad start to Reiichi—but the expression on the boy's face told him otherwise, and he had a sense that this was a conversation they needed to have in the right order, and probably without an audience. With a practiced flourish, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the table, wrapping the towel seamlessly around his waist as he dropped to his feet.

"Mm. You know what we need to do, _mon petite chou_ ," he broke in, slinging a stone-warmed arm over Fujishima's shoulder before the storm could break right here in the massage suite. "Let's skip ahead to the mineral baths, right next door—superb for the complexion. Yoshiya can finish this up on his own. He's all tense again," he added to the masseuse as he pushed open the door to the baths, leading Fujishima into the heady flush of steam beyond the threshold. "You'll have to start over again. Just put the extra session on my tab."

Yoshiya's lips had twisted into a frown—whether because of the reminder of Kiyomine or because he didn't appreciate being left in the masseuses' very capable hands, Reiichi couldn't discern. But whichever it was, he had more pressing problems at the moment. His last glimpse of Yoshiya was the wary set of his features before the fogged glass door slipped shut between them, the supple strains of soothing chimes traded out for the echo of his bare feet and Fujishima's boots on the damp travertine tiles. Suddenly there was no doubt in Reiichi's mind that if Kiyomine _had_ made a mess of things, it wasn't just the Kashiwagis who'd be taking him to task over it.

Dinner out with Masaya the week before had been an utter debacle—but if that moment in the car had taught Reiichi anything, it was that, given time and spared the stifling pressure of oppressive silence, Fujishima would eventually come out with whatever was bothering him. Fortunately, he had been to this spa many times, and it was easy enough to don the role of tour guide, detailing the facilities and describing each of the seven baths in turn, an introduction he had given more than once to the somewhat bemused members of the board, if usually not all but nude.

Fujishima didn't say a word until they'd shed their respective layers and slipped into the privacy of the third-smallest bath—the one optimal for exfoliating, though Reiichi had a feeling it wasn't the health benefits so much as the lion-faced waterfall that had drawn his guest to that one. He was halfway through an old, quick-at-hand story about Kashiwagi Senior dragging the company's new recruits up to this chateau and subjecting them to the mud baths when the floodgates finally opened, Fujishima straightening from blowing bubbles into the sodium and silica-infused water and taking a deep breath.

"What I had with Kiyomine…I thought I wanted it back, but I don't."

It took everything Reiichi had to keep his expression neutral, not to reveal that with those few words Fujishima had knocked the breath out of him, all the fears about bad breakups and broken hearts that he had locked away so deep inside himself suddenly loosed, whipping through him like a whirlwind. Even after all of Yoshiya's warnings, he'd never thought it possible that Kiyomine had ruined this for good…fortunately, Fujishima barreled on before he could completely twist himself into knots.

"I mean, I want something—I just…I don't think what we had is gonna be enough anymore, you know?"

"Oh." The single syllable was light on his lips, relieved and more than a little surprised. Reiichi wasn't sure Fujishima quite understood what he was saying, that there was really only one thing _more_ could mean, when you were as close as Fujishima and Kiyomine had been—but Reiichi thought he did, and he felt his shoulders relax again into the soothing ebb and pull of the water, the scent of sulfur and chloride filling his lungs as he found the will to inhale. It was what he'd always secretly hoped might be the outcome of the Kiyomine-Fujishima experiment, but these last few weeks, it had seemed like such a distant shore. "Oh, I see. Well." Fujishima gave him a look, slightly suspicious, and Reiichi cleared his throat, guiding them back to the matter at hand. "So, sledding was perfect, and then…did he apologize?"

"No," Fujishima said, and for the second time in two minutes Reiichi nearly lost his composure, brimming over with the urge to throttle Kiyomine for botching the very foundation of the reconciliation. But apparently Fujishima was just determined to give him arrhythmia by telling his story in fits and starts. "Well, I guess it's more like…he started to, but I didn't let him finish. I just ran for it." He slapped his hand down on the surface of the pool, the mineral water rippling away from him in an echo of his retreat.

Reiichi shifted on the underwater niche. "Because you were afraid you wouldn't believe him?" he asked gently, blind for a moment with the memory of Fujishima in Masaya's BMW, staring out into the streets of the sleepless city as if it were an ocean he could drown in. But Fujishima was shaking his head, looking just as lost as he had in the reflection of the car's dark window.

"I don't know. I mean, I was—I am scared of that. But then all of a sudden I got scared about what happens if I _do_ believe him. That would mean something too, right?"

"And you…don't want it to mean something?" Reiichi asked, what little comprehension he'd thought he had of the situation slipping away again. He was deeply suspect of all Kiyomine's complaints on the subject of his roommate, but he might have to concede his cousin's point—reluctantly—on this one count: Fujishima seemed determined to make things complicated.

"I don't know," Fujishima moaned again, fisting his hands around clumps of chestnut hair deranged by the snow and now the steam. "I don't know what I want. I just—I don't want to lose him, Reiichi-sempai," Fujishima said, and in the raw undertone of that admission Reiichi thought he could hear the same desperation that had roughened Kiyomine's voice so many times over these last five weeks, across the wreckage of a five-star meal he'd barely touched or cutting in and out through the speakers of Reiichi's cell phone, one of those late nights when he slipped out of Yoshiya's bed to patch as best he could the hole Fujishima's absence had left in the sullen boy one wing over. It was the same desperation he'd recognized in Masaya's car, the hopelessness that had made him determined, finally, to end all of this. Reiichi reached out and clasped Fujishima's hand through the illusion of the water, giving it a slight squeeze.

"Fujishima…" he began, as softly as he could. "You're losing him right now. You can't go on with things the way they are…and you have to know he can't either." That was the part he had fought to explain to Yoshiya: that this was hurting both of them, and that hurt was endless until they found a way to let it end. Fujishima had tucked the memory of that night away somewhere inside him, and like a figure in a snow globe nothing could thaw until he dared to break the glass.

Fujishima gave a heavy exhale, watching his miserable reflection in the impressionist surface of the pool. Then he sucked in a huge breath and dunked himself under—not really something one did in a bath like this, but Reiichi could tell it wasn't the time to quibble over etiquette—and came up in a great exhalation of soda water, shaking his head as if he were trying to throw off more than the steam. When their gazes met again, his eyes were clearer, but he still looked serious, an odd expression on such an adorable chipmunk face.

"So what do I do?" he asked.

Reiichi bit the inside of his cheek. He was too sharp a businessman not to recognize the moment for what it was—the pivot point of a negotiation, when just the right word or tone could make the other party cave and arrange everything to his favor. It would be so easy to press his silver tongue into service, convince Fujishima that what he really wanted to do was forgive Kiyomine everything, to run back to him and mend the rift that had kept them apart for far too long, the separation over, _fait accompli_. But the nagging voice of his conscience was in the back of his head—a voice that sounded suspiciously like Yoshiya's—asking him again if that was really what was best for Fujishima, or if he wasn't trying to fix things too quickly, leading Fujishima back to Kiyomine before he was ready and risking an even more violent fallout.

In his heart, Reiichi believed that Fujishima and Kiyomine were just right for each other, two mismatched pieces that somehow fit flawlessly…but he couldn't quite blind himself to the insight that such an unusual complement would only work if they found their way to each other naturally, when the time was right. He took a long breath, resisting the urge to blow it out childishly through his wet bangs—then he leaned back into the curve of the tile and gave the only answer the angel on his shoulder would allow.

"That depends on what you want, Fujishima," he said. "And that isn't something anyone else can decide for you."

Fujishima gave him a look that was somewhere between baleful and depressed—obviously not the clarity he'd been hoping for. It was enough to make Reiichi smile and slide around the bath to bump his shoulder against the younger boy's, reaching up to seize two towels from the waiting rack.

"You'll have to sleep on it. But, in the meantime, you and I are going directly to the nail station to get fantastic manicures—wild enough to set Yoshiya's head spinning. Then it's back to the suite to order seven courses of room service, try on every robe in that closet, and jump on both of the beds before Yoshiya's released from his massage!"

That at least got a smile from his pensive little companion, and Fujishima relaxed against him, a spark of interest igniting in those light brown eyes. "Do you think we could order a double fudge sundae?" he asked, to which Reiichi just laughed, giving his sodden hair a little tousle.

"We can order Baked Alaska, if that's what you'd like," he promised. "And then we'll all crawl into one of those enormous beds and drive Yoshiya mad gossiping all night."

If all went according to plan, there wouldn't be that many more nights when he had Fujishima to himself. Reiichi would make the most of it while he could.


End file.
